Hello! A friend directed me to BBF here to see if I could gain any insight or help on how to navigate this situation that I'm having with Spectrum. I apologize in advance if this is super long winded or convoluted to read.
TL;DR: I am a streamer (using OBS) and last month my internet was unstable and all over the place. One moment consistent with the connection and the next it was fluctuating wildly. I have had this issue in the past and they seemingly resolved it but now I'm being told there's nothing they can do by the person you call for tech support.
Now more details:
Speed tests usually run fine between 750-900 as I'm paying for 1 GB and uploads are similar and usually at 30-35. However, since OBS requires a consistent, stable connection and if I run a test during a long/bad fluctuation then the speeds will get wonky and be all over the place too. However, it's hard to catch that or predict since it's intermittent. When I stream, it usually stays around a nice smooth 10,000 kbps for good encoding but when the fluctuations happen it'll jump up and then go down and all over the place. Sometimes it'll just go to 0 kbps outright and drop the stream. This happens for 30 seconds to up to an hour at random times. I have adjusted the bitrate to lower and streamed to several different services but the issue persists when I patiently wait for it to happen.
This issue happened back around Novemberish? It took several techs coming out before they decided to check lines or go beyond my home- I'm not sure exactly what they did, but they put flags down and such and did work outside of a tech visiting. The issue felt solved and I had a great connection for a couple of months. However, this past month (Feb) it came back- pretty much identical symptoms. At this point, literally everything has been replaced and checked over from November- lines, modem, router thoroughly checked, etc. Also I tested different CAT cables and different computers (both easily capable of streaming) with same results, regardless if it was directly plugged into the modem or not.
So the first tech guy that came out in Feb found nothing wrong, but as he was leaving another spectrum truck was in the neighborhood. I'm not sure exactly why or the reason, but they decided to test the neighborhood and found something was "definitely wrong." They said it would take a few days, so I gave them a couple weeks (with the issue still occurring) due to the ice storm and then called when it seemed to be especially bad one night and then I lost internet completely for an hour or so.
In comes tech #2, who tells me it shows they fixed the neighborhood problem but the... frequency was different now? So he had to adjust my internet modem to match? (I don't get how this is a thing- wouldn't everyone need that adjustment then? IDK) And then replaced the modem again and called it a day. But yea, the problem is still happening so I called them again and now they're essentially saying there isn't anything they can do- they're looking at my modem and it's been replaced and it shows everything is "fine" and they don't know why I don't have a stable connection intermittently. And... that's it. There's nothing else.
Is that really it? I'm paying a lot specifically to stream and I've lost a lot of revenue this past month and it just really leaves me at a loss. I just am wondering if anyone here who may also stream or what-not has had similar experience or knows how to navigate towards a resolution? I've had them for several years and while they're not always perfect, this is the worst I've ever had this issue (well, except for November but at least then they did something that fixed it for a few months.)